Kenewendo adamant in bringing Alibaba to Botswana

Publishing Date : 03 October, 2018

Author : TSAONE SEGAETSHO

Upon returning from China state visit, both President Mokgweetsi Masisi and Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry Bogolo Kenewendo hinted that the Botswana delegate met with billionaire Jack Ma to bring his successful e-commerce business to this country.

Ranked as the 20th richest man in the world by business publication Forbes, Chinese businessman Ma owns Alibaba, one of the world’s top e-commerce businesses. Alibaba fits today’s way of doing business well as the world is going into digitalization. Alibaba is involved in commercial transactions and trading conducted electronically on the Internet. Electronic commerce or e-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet.

In a recent interview with BusinessPost, Kenewendo revealed that “we are still discussing bringing Alibaba to Botswana.” This publication’s interview was followed by Kenewendo and Masisi’s revelations this month where they hinted that they met with Alibaba owner Ma. When addressing journalists upon returning from China, Kenewendo said that Masisi met with the vice president of Alibaba to emphasized Botswana’s relations with the e-commerce giant.

“As it has already been stated before we met with Mr Jack ma of the Alibaba Group-this was the second meeting that we have had with him just to formalise the relations that Alibaba will have with Botswana,” said Kenewendo in a press conference earlier this month. In an interview with this publication Kenewendo was however cagey to give details of the discussion with Ma and said “our negotiations are currently confidential.”

Last month Ma visited South Africa where he announced that his interest will be in Africa this time. He even gave African entrepreneurs with $10 million funding. Ma is a former English teacher and quit his job to form one of the biggest e-commerce success stories in the world.